Gaining Traction

The troupe visited Edinburgh, Carlisle, and York. They were headed to Leeds when he finally decided to put the thought of the red-haired girl and her butterflies from his mind. He refused to admit, as the weeks went by, that he was waiting to see another star, that he believed in the map and, by extension, in her. How foolish was he to believe she would remember him, would alter the stars for him?

The circus was picking up traction. Word spread that they were travelling south, and the audiences in each city had gotten bigger and bigger. He rarely saw his parents when they weren’t practicing, unless his father stopped to ruffle his hair and his mother insisted that he needed to find an act, or something to do on stage, if he wasn’t going to read the cards for the audience. He’d been approached by Maurice, the magician, who was looking for an assistant. He wasn’t sure he wanted to be a magician’s assistant, but when asked what he did want to be he only shook his head and refused to reply. What he wanted was very unlikely, and it had nothing to do with the circus at all.

He stargazed less and less each night; in part because the larger cities were so bright it was difficult to make out any stars. In the country stars flared like flames, but still he did not look. He resented the stars, and the fact that a new one hadn’t yet appeared. The stars did not care about a little boy lying in the tall grass outside a circus tent in York. They had better things to do. Except tonight, the only matter that required their attention was the making of space for a new star. Beside the constellation of Castor, one of the Gemini twins, it was red, as red as the Garnet star. It was so small he thought for a moment it was a spot of light in his vision, as if he had stared at a too-bright light too long. It had the impression of the arcane, of atavistic power. It was as red as her hair.

He took off toward the backstage tent. He knocked over several pieces of the contortionist’s paraphernalia as he rummaged for the map in his bag. He sprinted back outside and opened it on the grass. The light from the big top painted shadows across it like spilled ink, but he could make out the new star, in red ink, very clearly beside Castor. Tibia. The flute. A half a world away from his serpent charmer star.

Inside the tent the audience burst into applause. Probably the trapeze swinger had finished his routine and was taking a bow from a great and terrible height.

The boy suspected that somewhere, the red-haired girl was taking a dramatic bow, just for him.

Art by Adam S. Doyle

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Serpent Star

He walked with a world in his pocket, a collection of stories and myths that were larger and more real to him than the circus tent and the many cities they visited. He thought often and long about the red haired girl and the blue butterflies. It seemed he could not think of one without the other. Where there was red hair, there were blue butterflies, and vice versa.

He took it out occasionally, unrolled it on the floor of the tent, in the trapeze swinger’s corner, because she was the tidiest and therefore had the more floor space. He held down the curling corners of the map with paperweights: a chipped crystal ball that the fortuneteller had given him, a deck of playing cards with flowers on the non-suited side, a glass blown bluebell, and an array of chess pieces. He considered adding more stars to the map. More constellations. It did not seem right to do it without her.

This was until the day that a star appeared on its own. Not on the map, but in the sky. He’d been sitting in the audience under the big top, too full of chocolate covered popcorn to sleep, but hopelessly bored by the routine, which he had seen several times before. He shuffled between patrons toward the opening of the tent and pushed aside the canvas. The night outside made it hard to believe that summer could ever end. It was warm, filled with the sound of cicadas, smelling of popcorn and light rain and wet loam. The sky was dusted with stars, he could name each one: Arcturus, Lesath, Maia. He pointed to them each, as if the red-haired girl was here beside him, her butterflies flitting up between the light of each star. He whispered their names under his breath. Then the whispering stopped abruptly when he pointed to a space in the sky that had, previously, been empty.

The new star was just off the constellation of Ursa Minor, so close to Polaris that Polaris’ light almost eclipsed it. But it was there, distinct and twinkling, determined to shine.

Even without the map he knew which star it was. He had drawn it on the map, and the red-haired girl had named it. She had pointed to it and christened it before a butterfly had landed on it. Coreanid. His first thought was not that it was impossible that a star on their drawn map could have appeared in the sky. It was: Did she do this for me?

He was certain that she had. And he was also certain that she wanted something back. A star for a star. A story for a story. Something with which to prove his mettle. He wondered what he was supposed to give her.

Some days later, at the end of their stretch in Essex, he unfolded the map, carefully, and took out his pen. He was hesitant to make a mark on it, but he was afraid to leave her star alone in the sky, waiting for his. He tested his pen on some scrap paper, then, very delicately, dotted a star beside Scorpius. Serpens, he thought, and wrote the name beside it. The serpent charmer star. He sat back and marveled at his handiwork, feeling, for the first time, that the he was content with the ground beneath him, that it was not so strange for new stars to appear. He reached for his tarot card deck, bound in silk, and unwrapped it. The edges were worn, but the colours of the pictures on the cards, all copper and muted creams, were vivid. He cut the deck in half and drew the top card from the bottom half of the deck. L’Etoile. His star would rise. It would be a vertiginous force in the sky. He hoped she would see it. He replaced the card in the deck, waited for the ink to dry, and folded the map. 

Art by Erin

Text by Lucie MacAulay